Breach of Trust

by David Ellis

  I picked up the receiver. “David,” I said. “Long time, no talk. How’d the circumcision go?”

  “Are you able to talk?” Tucker was on his cell phone in crowd noise, walking while he talked. “Let’s meet in ten minutes. Suite 410?”

  “A friend of a friend,” I said to Shauna, which wasn’t terribly convincing, since we shared most of the same friends, and we went to college and law school together. But her mind was on her steamy date with Roger and she let it go.

  Suite 410 in our building had been vacant until today, when a bogus company called Hamlin Consulting rented the space on a month-to-month lease. I opened the frosted-glass door and found an empty reception area and what appeared to be two offices on each flank.

  “Honey, I’m home!” I called out.

  I heard Tucker clearing his throat down the hallway to my left. I found him in an office with a chaw of tobacco protruding from his cheek and an empty Coke can on a desk.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he said. “I told you to go slow, to let Cimino come to you. You remember me saying that?”

  “That rings a bell.”

  “That meant, go in there, keep your trap shut, and let him give you assignments, and fucking do the assignments,” he said. “That didn’t mean going in there and propositioning the fucking guy.”

  I didn’t feel the need to respond. I thought it had gone fine.

  “Well?” he asked. “You have some great reason why you didn’t follow my directions?” Lee Tucker was a generally easygoing guy, I gathered, but not at this moment. His eyes were on fire.

  “You were trying to clear your own name in there,” he said, annoyed that I wasn’t responding. “And in the process, you might have fucked the whole thing up.”

  “Is that what you think?” I asked. “That I fucked this thing up?”

  “It’s sure as hell possible you did, yeah. Maybe you seemed too eager to him.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed, which only made him angrier. I admit, I was enjoying this.

  “You do what I tell you,” he said, directing a finger at me. “You run it past me first. There’s a certain amount of ad-lib we can’t control, but you don’t walk in there with an agenda like that without passing it by me first. Are we clear?”

  He was right, but I couldn’t acknowledge it. He didn’t know that I had an agenda that differed from the federal government’s. They were trying to catch some swindlers. I was trying to solve a murder. Okay, and I was pissed off at Cimino and his people for dragging me into the mud with them. I was letting the feds use me for both reasons. But in the end, when all was said and done, for me this was about Ernesto Ramirez, not some public corruption case. I wanted to gain Cimino’s trust so I could get inside, so I could find out more about who killed Ernesto. If Cimino went down because he had his hand in the public coffers, so be it.

  “You wanted me to hook Cimino,” I said. “I think I did that.”

  “You better hope you did.”

  I shook my head, like he was a nuisance. “Think like Cimino,” I said. “I refuse to do these bullshit memos he wants. But he doesn’t bitch me out. He doesn’t say a word to me. He just has someone rewrite them, still using my name. He fucks me, basically. Then he sends this Hauser guy to hire me for some legal work. This is how he says ‘sorry’ and ‘thank you.’ That’s his world. He’s made me an offer, Lee, and he’s waiting to see if I’ll accept. He’s betting I will. So what did I just do in there? I just said ‘yes.’ I made him think he’s the smartest guy in the world. You think I just made him suspicious? I think I just stroked his ego.”

  Tucker stared at me for a long time. One eye closed to a wink, but he definitely wasn’t exhibiting affection toward me. “I’ve handled a hundred of you,” he said. “Guys who think they’re suddenly experts in how to do this.”

  “Did they all have clean, fresh breath like me?”

  He laughed, a humorless grunt. “Well, you are one fucking hotshot, aren’t you, Kolarich?”

  My cell phone rang. Didn’t recognize the number. Lee seemed annoyed that I would take the call while we were in the midst of a conversation, which was why I did it.

  “Mr. Kolarich? This is Janine from Ciriaco Properties. Mr. Cimino would like you at his office tomorrow morning at nine. He said he’d like to discuss your business offer.”

  “Certainly, Janine,” I said with mock sweetness for Lee’s benefit. “I’ll see Mr. Cimino tomorrow at nine.”

  I closed my cell phone and thought for a moment. Replayed the call in my mind.

  “Go ahead, hotshot,” said Tucker. “Pat yourself on the—what is it?”

  Something was rubbing me wrong. I shook my head. I related the call verbatim to Tucker.

  “So?” he said. “I’ll meet you at eight-thirty for the hand-off.”

  I paced in a circle and stopped. “No,” I said.

  Tucker thought about that a moment. “No?” he asked, but he wasn’t putting up much of a fight. He may have been having a similar thought.

  “Something about the way she framed it. ‘He wants to discuss your business offer?’ It’s like Cimino was telegraphing it.”

  “Hmph. Maybe. He wants to make sure, if you’d ever wear a wire, that you’ll wear it tomorrow?”

  “Let’s leave it off,” I said.

  “That creates problems for me, you know that.”

  Of course I did. I was a defense attorney. When a government cooperator only wears a wire some of the time, it leaves the other conversations open to cross-examination. A good lawyer will claim that the government informant entrapped the defendant during the non-recorded conversations and then turned on the wire when it suited his purposes. Prosecutors prefer their cooperators all wired, all the time. But these things are fluid. Every situation is different.

  I stated the obvious: “It’ll create more problems if he makes me.” Tucker relented, more easily than I would have expected. “Okay,” he said. “I have to trust you on this.”

  33

  I MADE IT TO CIMINO’S BUILDING BY TEN MINUTES TO nine. For some reason, it seemed to make sense to me to be punctual for once.

  “How are you?” I said to the Amazon princess at the reception desk. I didn’t know where Cimino found these women.

  “You’re actually on time.” Cimino appeared from the hallway, looking immaculate as always in his slick Italian suit and bright tie. He kept walking, past me. “Come on.”

  “We’re going somewhere?”

  “We’re going somewhere. Sweetheart, tell them to have my car out front?”

  I followed Cimino to the elevator. He kept his thoughts to himself. He stared at the doors of the elevator, rocking on the balls of his feet, breathing with some congestion. He probably expected me to break the silence with nervous conversation. He probably also expected that his silence was unnerving me. It wasn’t, other than a fleeting notion, maybe one-in-a-hundred chance, that he was taking me somewhere to be executed. Okay, maybe one in fifty. I’d just make sure that Charlie went first through any door.

  We joined a few people on the elevator and took it down to the main floor. Cimino took me out a side door, where a bright yellow Porsche 911 awaited us with an attendant standing sentry.

  Cimino handed him a tip and got in. I jumped in the other side. The car was immaculate, with a black leather interior and a top-of-the-line stereo.

  “Nice ride,” I said.

  Cimino threw the stick into first and turned out onto the street with the fluid precision you’d expect from a Porsche. My first time riding in one of these, and I hoped it wouldn’t be my last.

  “Not so great in the winter,” said Cimino. “When it gets slick, I don’t even bother.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “You play racquetball?”

  Did I play racquetball? “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Good.”

  “Not well,” I said.

  “Even better.” It was a ten-minute ride, and I would have been happy with te
n hours in this thing. The leather was so soft, and the ride so smooth, I could have dozed off if I weren’t enjoying myself so much. An air freshener shaped like an evergreen tree, hanging from the rearview mirror, bobbed around as Cimino navigated the car through traffic, injuring a few traffic ordinances in the process. The air freshener seemed a little out of place, a little tacky in a hundred-thousand-dollar sports car, but that seemed appropriate for Charlie Cimino: first-class with a touch of vulgar.

  We pulled up to the Gold Coast Athletic Club and got out. “Good morning, Mr. Cimino,” a man in a blue jacket greeted him.

  “I don’t have any workout clothes,” I said.

  It didn’t seem to trouble Charlie. We took an elevator to the third floor and walked through a well-appointed room with a buffet of fruits and coffee and a sitting area. We entered the men’s locker room and Cimino told an attendant, “My friend needs clothes for racquetball, Jamie.”

  “Sure, Mr. Cimino. Shoe size?” he asked me.

  “Um, probably thirteen,” I said.

  We walked through a few aisles of lockers, the smell of aftershave and soap in the air. By the time Cimino had taken off his shoes, the attendant had arrived with a gray t-shirt, black running shorts, socks and a pair of gym shoes.

  I opened a locker and undressed. I threw my shirt and tie on one hook, my suit coat and pants on the other, my shoes and dress socks on the bottom of the locker. I put my wallet, keys, and cell phone on the top rack. The clothes fit pretty well; the shoes were a little snug but it wasn’t worth complaining.

  “Size thirteen,” Cimino said. “What are you—six-three? Six-four?”

  “Somewhere in there.” Six-three, two hundred thirty in college, when measurements mattered. I hadn’t weighed myself in years.

  “You were an athlete?”

  “Played some ball in college.”

  “What college?”

  “State.”

  “What position?”

  “Wide-out.”

  “No shit?”

  I closed my locker. “Is there a lock or something?”

  He shook his head. “This is the Gold Coast Athletic Club.” Apparently, that was supposed to mean that no locks were necessary. Rich people don’t steal? In my experience, they do it more than anyone.

  I was handed a racquet, and I followed Cimino onto a court. It was clear from the outset that he knew how to play the game—he was rather adept at hitting the ball low against the front wall so it bounced twice before I could reach it—but he was pushing fifty years old and he was overweight and, it appeared, was not very athletic even during his heyday. It wasn’t really a challenge. I didn’t hit with the same strategic precision, but I could chase down most balls and force him to run a lot, which he didn’t like doing. It occurred to me that if I worked him hard enough, I could induce cardiac arrest, kill him, and get the feds off my back.

  It also occurred to me that Lee Tucker, were he here, would have counseled me to let Cimino win. Keep me on his good side, that kind of thing. But I wasn’t wired that way. Put me in a competitive sport, and you better keep your hands away from the cage.

  It felt good. I used to be a workout fanatic, but I had dropped off after everything happened with Talia and Emily. I hadn’t gained weight—if anything, I’d lost some—but my muscles felt loose and flabby and I didn’t have much wind.

  “Enough. Fuck. Enough.” Cimino’s gray shirt was plastered to his chest with sweat. He ran a hand towel over his face and then wrapped it around his neck. I followed him back to that reception area, where we drank orange juice and Cimino ate a plate of cantaloupe.

  “That was fun,” I said, putting the cool glass against my forehead.

  “For you, fuckin’-A it was.”

  A man in a sport coat and slacks approached him. “Mr. Cimino, hello.”

  “Hey, Rick, how are you?” He shifted upright, with some discomfort, and shook hands.

  “Very well,” the man said. He gave Cimino a knowing nod. “Everything’s great.”

  “Great, Rick. Good to see you.”

  The man left us, and Cimino seemed to focus on me awhile. He finished off his plate of cantaloupe, devouring them with the same enthusiasm he probably brought to any moneymaking scheme he could get his hands on.

  “All right, Jason Kolarich,” he said. “Now it’s time we talk.”

  34

  “SO YOU WERE A PROSECUTOR,” CIMINO SAID. “WHY’D you quit?”

  I rubbed my thumb with my index and middle fingers, the universal sign for money. “Tired of struggling to make ends meet.”

  He watched me. I thought of this as an audition. I wasn’t completely lying about my reason for leaving the county attorney’s office, but this was the answer he wanted to hear.

  “Okay, so you hit it big at a fancy law firm, and then you left. Now you’re all by yourself at a rinky-dink law firm and you want to work for a state procurement board?”

  I thought about that for a moment. “I wanted more flexibility,” I said. “Being my own boss, I can do whatever I want. Nobody’s looking over my shoulder.”

  He nodded. But I had only given half an answer.

  “But you know something?” I went on. “They don’t knock down your door quite as much when you’re not working alongside Paul Riley and those other lawyers. They want someone with gray hair. They want experience. So I figured, I needed to branch out more. Make some connections, meet the right people, show them what I’m capable of. I’m betting that when I show what I can do, people will notice. Maybe one day, I’ll have one of those 911s in my garage.”

  I was feeding him red meat. He’d done the same, after all, probably after working under other people. My law firm was nothing compared to Ciriaco Properties, but the concept was no different.

  Work hard and the money you make goes into your pocket, not the guy’s above you. And I didn’t have to take anyone’s shit. I worked as hard as I wished. It was hard to imagine any other way now. It would feel like a small defeat to go back to working for someone else.

  “You got family?” he asked.

  “My mother died a few years back from cancer. My old man’s in prison.”

  “For what?”

  I had a feeling Cimino already knew all of this. “Fraud,” I said. “He’s a grifter. A con artist. And a shitty one. A drunk.”

  “You get along with him?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? He offended your moral sensibilities?”

  Actually, he did. I was always ashamed of my father’s chosen profession, to the point that I repeated his lie—that he worked in “sales”—to everyone at school and quickly tired of trying to justify his actions to myself. But I didn’t think it made sense to show Cimino my sense of moral outrage. It wasn’t exactly a job requirement here.

  “No, it wasn’t that.” I took a drink of orange juice. “I had two problems with him. One, he didn’t do it well. He was lazy. You know how he got caught the first time? He scammed some old guy on some bogus time-share thing, got a nice down payment from the guy, but it turns out this guy’s brother was retired FBI. So the brother gets the G to follow my dad around, and it took all of about two days to pinch him. He was too damn lazy to scout out his target.”

  Cimino seemed to find this interesting, maybe even surprising. “And what was the other reason?” he asked me. “You said two things.”

  “The worst part was that he didn’t look out for us. He didn’t provide. We were dirt poor, and he spent half of his loot on booze. He ignored my mother, and he took swats at my brother and me. You know, the beatings, I could’ve handled, if he put food on the table. If he took care of Mom. You take care of your own, or you can’t look at yourself in the mirror.”

  Now this part was coming from the heart, but I wouldn’t normally have shared all of this. I was trying to create an image for Cimino, an image that reminded him of himself. I didn’t know the details of Cimino’s life, but I assumed from the wedding band that he was married and he p
robably had kids. And no doubt, guys like him, they tell themselves they’re doing it for their family. They wrap themselves around the dual justifications of familial obligations and past difficulties—a poor childhood, perceived inequities—to rationalize their criminal behavior. There are all sorts of players in their little game, but the bad guy is never them.

  At his behest, I elaborated, telling him about my brother, Pete, who was still trying to get a grip on himself. We briefly touched on my wife and daughter—“Hector told me,” Cimino said, sparing us both the morbid details. He was probably wondering how the loss of Talia and Emily factored into everything. Did it make me more reckless? Would I be unsteady? Unpredictable?

  I was wondering some of those things myself.

  Some time passed. Cimino got another glass of juice and some more fruit. A couple of old guys, one of whom was a judge I once tried a case in front of as a prosecutor, wandered in and out.

  Cimino bit at a cuticle on his thumb. “You know, kid, you’re right about one thing. There’s a lot of opportunity out there. This thing here. This thing, there’s a lot of room for everyone to make money. This could be one big happy fucking family. But you know what the catch is?”

  I shook my head. “What’s the catch?”

  “The catch is that this isn’t one big happy fucking family. There’s risk everywhere. And I don’t like risk, kid. I do not like it.” He popped a slice of orange in his mouth. “I need a guy like you. I’ve been looking for a guy like you. Hector says you’re as good a lawyer as he knows. Me, I haven’t seen anything that tells me different. So that part, we’re okay.”

  So far, so good. Cimino shifted in his chair and turned to me. “You’re with me or you’re against me. There’s nothing in between. You understand that?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You remember that, I’ll make you rich. But you cross me, kid, you’ll be sorry you ever met me. I take care of the people around me and everyone else—everyone else—” He made a noise. A smile crept across his face. He looked over his shoulder and then leaned into me. “A guy named Dick Baroni. B-A-R-O-N-I. He could tell you something about being with me and then against me. He could tell you, but he won’t. You could cut off his dick, he wouldn’t tell you about Charlie Cimino. Not anymore.”